I have known folks who were in the smelter business and they assure me smelting is not all it is cracked up to be. One guy kept at it so long he keeled over in front of a blast furnace and just smelt to high heaven.

Smelts are good eating when, like anything, they're cooked right. If they're not cooked right you can use them as fertilizer.

Well, Mom, I'm off to Merryland again tomorrow morn. Well, really just after noon, local time, but I get on the shuttle tomorrow morn. Hope this trip will finish things up out there. Then we can go back for things like graduations and we can even spend Christmas in our own home without having to have surgery as an excuse.

Yes, Ballsworthy is continually stalking and pestering the Rutledge clan, seeking to prise information out of their domestic staff, spreading dreadful rumours about supposed human sacrifices, and generally making an utter pest of himself. Something really should be done about it. Can't Winston talk to some of his old friends in the SAS?

I saw snippets of it. I must say that those "tight ends" are attractive, in a visceral sort of way! Leave it to the Americans to be so forthright in naming playing positions. My niece Veronica also seemed to enjoy the show, as she went down to the pub to view it on the telly there. She must have stayed over with friends, as she hasn't come home yet. I do so hope that she didn't run into that awful Hector Ballsworthy chap, a cad of the first water.

I watched the SUper Bowl--I think this is the first year in which I have watched more than snippets of one. What an intriguing contest? Clashing Titans and collisions of cleaver strategies and brilliant manuvers under high pressure. And the sheer brute force of it!! Why it's better than watching lions eat Christians, I'm sure!

I didn't watch the Super Bowel. I didn't watch anything about people living in swamps or so far back in the hills the sun sets between them and the road. I didn't watch Fox News. I am, however, watching print on paper and the mountains off in the distance and the snow melting and lots of other stuff.

Ah, yes...Dachshunds! They're like a breath of fresh air to a stale room, aren't they? Lovely little creatures. What are they up to? I suspect they are hatching new schemes for acquiring FOOD, the main concern of a Dachshund's life. And stolen food always tastes better! Thus, a Dachshund is, by definition, a thief...and proud of it.

Anybody watched "W" lately? Or "Game Change"? I found them both very interesting.

My friend Mary's dachsie had to have three vertebrae fused in his neck. After SIX WEEKS of crate rest, even being carried to the yard, he's now his old self. However, he expects to be waited upon and carried out into the yard. That is, of course, no different than before the operation and the crate rest.

I should not pick on Little Hawk that way. He's not a product of the English public schools. Amos, on the other hand, admits to spending his youthful summers in France, the Land of Lechery and Surrender.

No she hasn't, she's just wearing a really baggy sweatshirt this morning. With all of the vigorous work around the house and yard and hauling drunks upstairs to bed (yes, youse guys when you've tied one on. . .) she's very fit.

$850 for the wheel bearing, the rear differential service, and an oil change. (I had a coupon for $6 off the oil change. Whew!) They washed the truck for free, and that is the only part of today's activity that is actually visible.

See, Stilly, if you would take out the back wall of your garage and install a door there instead you could put a grease rack in front of that back door and be able to do your own car repairs! In fact, installing the grease rack in the middle of a trench would allow you to work on the truck without using the rack for things you don't need a rack to repair. The dogs would love it, too!

No, no, don't thank me. I come up with solutions like this all the time.

My pickemup truck is in the shop. Needs a front hub assembly replaced (making a noise - could loose a wheel), needs the rear axle service, and it's time for an oil change. Upwards of $900 on today's visit to the dealer.

You are so deft at slippery talk, dear Sir, that politics is the only corridor in which you will ever feel at home; to turn the embarrassment of slow adaptation into a virtue by quick-tongued semantic tomfoolery is the ability sine qua non of the true politician. Failing that, you could try used car sales. "Those rust marks on the valve springs, Madam, are NOT a flaw--they bear testament to the fact that the car was never driven over 45 miles an hour!"

Before we reach another landmark number, one which will create a situation in which every second number is an odd number, I feel that this should be posted. It is so very sad, so very tragic, and so well summed up in the last line.

Lament on the Death of Willie by Julie A. Moore

Willie had a purple monkey climbing on a yellow stick, And when he sucked the paint all off it made him deathly sick; And in his latest hours he clasped that monkey in his hand, And bade good-bye to earth and went into a better land.

Oh! no more he'll shoot his sister with his little wooden gun; And no more he'll twist the pussy's tail and make her yowl, for fun. The pussy's tail now stands out straight; the gun is laid aside; The monkey doesn't jump around since little Willie died.